


Catch The Ear of The Desperate

by makothecat



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Eddie Kaspbrak sees Ghosts, Empath Eddie Kaspbrak, F/M, Ghost Richie Tozier, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oblivious Eddie Kaspbrak, One-Sided Bill Denbrough/Eddie Kaspbrak, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rating May Change, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Suicide, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23336950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makothecat/pseuds/makothecat
Summary: For as long as he knows, Eddie has been plagued by a shadow. On the walls, in his room at night. The doctor calls it sleep paralysis, and his mother calls it a poltergeist. They try to leave it all behind and find a new home in Maine, a house which has been on the market for quite some time. No one from Derry would've bought it. Some queer died there in the eighties.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

Eddie has always seen odd things. He can’t remember a time when he hasn’t, and it really does _not_ help his anxiety. It scares the shit out of him, to be quite honest. 

His first memory of it involved lying in a bed, not his bed at home, with what he only knows was pneumonia because of how often his mother cries about it. It’s how she gets him to stay home instead of going out with friends, or to prevent him from getting a job - she _worries,_ he’s _fragile._ He knows he was five for just about the same reason; it was right after daddy died. She’s _lonely,_ she _worries._ Eddie had gotten very sick and spent the night alone in a hospital bed. He didn’t know where his mom went that night. Usually, when he’s in the hospital, she’s there from the moment he wakes up until he falls back asleep. As he’s gotten older, he’s realized that yes, she must leave at some point. She shows up in different clothes and with her hair washed and his homework under her arm. But he did not know that then, and as overwhelming as her presence is, he felt small and lonely and completely without anyone. He missed his mommy, he didn’t quite understand what happened to his daddy, he wondered when he was coming back and where he had gone in the first place. 

That’s when it had happened - when a shadow appeared in the room, on the other side of the curtain. It was shaped like a person. And it breathed like one, all night. Standing over him. Eddie hadn’t even known he was crying until the tears dried cold and tight on his cheeks, too scared to move. 

It’s been ten years and he still had bad dreams about it. He goes through phases of waking up to similar apparitions, they sometimes last for weeks or months. It will gradually fade out, only for Eddie to remember it again and think about it and suddenly, the shadow comes back.

The doctor said it’s sleep paralysis. That he should sleep on his side, with white noise in the background, and try moving his fingers to wake himself up. 

Which is a strange diagnosis in Eddie’s opinion, since he’s _always_ awake when it happens. Perhaps he could’ve convinced himself otherwise if every time was like the first. With him in bed, in a dark room, eyes barely open. But it hadn’t stayed that way. He’d sit up in bed and see it, or get back under the sheets from his trip to the bathroom and find it waiting. Eddie _wasn’t_ asleep. Relief never came with a startling shake to his shoulder, the way parents wake their kids up in movies. Or with his alarm clock singing, or a cold sweat and a view of the ceiling. It only came when the sun rose, and his mother walked into his room. She’d see him, standing or sitting, fixated on nothing, just a corner or a wall. She’d draw his attention away from it, just for a moment, and when he’d look back it really would be nothing. It would be gone. 

It was that very event - the looking away and it not being there when he glanced back - that made it worse. 

Some months ago, Eddie woke from his sleep. Checked his bedside clock, and surveyed his room for the thing, as it had become a paranoid habit. It was not there, and so he leapt out of bed for a glass out water. Light on his toes, not wishing to wake mommy up. He stood at the sink and drank two cups of cold tap water. He was most definitely awake. 

When he turned to go back to his room, there it was. In the corner of the kitchen, behind their round breakfast table. The table was pressed into that corner, with a seat no one ever sat in trapped there. 

Eddie and the shape both stood still, as if paralyzed by one another. It had caught him off guard; he’d never seen it outside of a bedroom. Eddie’s heart pounded in his chest with surprise. He wanted to go back to bed, he was so tired of doing this. His grades were suffering, he was falling asleep in his classes, he was just so over it. And it occurred to him to just..look away. 

It was easier thought than done, taking more than a minute to pry his eyes away. He glanced over his shoulder, at the kitchen window. The sky outside a sapphire blue, still dark but relenting to the coming day. Eddie took a deep breath, and moved to go back to his room. 

But it was still in the kitchen with him. Absent from the corner, now in the doorway leading out into the hall. There was nothing to the thing’s face, it had always been a shadowy black visage, even as morning light had poured in upon it many times before. Something about it felt determined, upset, and Eddie wasn’t sure how he knew that. 

It was as if the thing started coming toward him, though it took no physical steps forward. It grew taller, up the wall and onto the ceiling stretching out to him and all Eddie could think to do was try again, look away from it again. 

The window was no brighter. He whipped back around. The doorway was empty again. The corner was as well. Eddie sighed heavily, trying to calm himself down. And then it breathed. 

Right over his shoulder. 

It was almost as though he felt it more than he heard it. 

Eddie bolted, not a second thought to the noise, to mommy’s room. There was a chorus of alarmed and concerned questions from her, but she quickly allowed him into her bed anyway. Tucking her comforter, hefty and inconsistently plush due to age, around him. It didn’t feel like much of a relief, but it did lull him back to sleep. 

When the alarms went off and mommy stroked his cheek and shook his shoulder like a movie-parent, they went into the kitchen to find all his pills strewn all over the floor. The cabinet they had been in ravaged. 

She’d shouted at him and blamed him, and Eddie felt like a child insisting that the proverbial monster under his bed did it. She made him pick them up and wouldn’t hear another word. 

Soon enough, though, he wouldn’t have to tell her. 

Eddie thinks he’s blocked that night out for the most part. All he has left to remember it by are the bruises and a broken bone, his arm fixed in a neat white plaster cast. He has little memory of leaving the house. Even the whole ride from New York to Maine was fuzzy. 

He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember what happened, anyway. He knew it was enough to convince his mother. So much so that they were selling that apartment - running away from it and hoping it wouldn’t follow. 

There was a certain pain to it, knowing it was where his family had been complete, for the short time it was. It was where his parents had brought him home to for the first time, and where many of the pictures they have of his dad were taken. He won’t be able to take the photo of “Frank+Eddie 8 months” off the fridge and hold it right up to the spot in the living room that it matches up with anymore. 

Eddie wasn’t exactly sad to leave it, though. 

Mommy said their house was haunted - poltergeist was the word she used. That’s why the pills would get spilled, or go missing entirely, no matter where she hid them. Eddie couldn’t have done it when the cleaners under the sink all leaked out during their sleep - that cabinet was locked. There was no way he could make the phone ring all night. Not when he was next to her in bed dawn after dawn from the fear of seeing those things, or for not being present and accounted for while they were happening. 

They found their new home in his aunt’s town, where there was a home for sale that had been on the market for a long time. That meant they could get a good price for it. His mother made the movers take their shoes off every time they came in and out. Eddie could only bring his backpack in himself. He tried to ignore the mens’ pitying looks - they didn’t know how much better this was for him. Dusty house and overbearing mother be damned, he was at least alive! 

The house _was_ dusty, though. Over the course of their unpacking he would hear many times about his own asthma and other ailments until eventually, they had settled in well enough. Mommy made herself known to the town pharmacy, and got a call center job. She enrolled him in Derry Public High School. They shopped for new clothes and furniture and painted over the half-scratched off name on their mailbox - something starting with T, and either a G or a Z in it, all that legibly remains being the loop of one of them. 

Eddie hasn’t seen the shadow here. He avoids thinking about it for too long, as soon as it pops up he tries to drown it out with catchy songs or homework or just staring at his new ceiling, wondering who it used to belong to. There are glow-in-the-dark star stickers up there. Mommy couldn’t get them down, she wasn’t tall enough, even standing on his bed. So they left them there. There was a vague promise that they’d have them removed when they painted, but Eddie didn’t mind them so much. 

The green glow is sort of comforting. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been there, but they’re still lighting the night, making it a little less scary. Eddie grows a little more confident in himself. He sleeps better, he’s not as afraid. Seemingly to her chagrin, he hasn’t slept in his mother’s bed even once since they’ve moved here. 

Eddie, once more, wakes to an itchy throat in need of water. The shadow doesn’t even cross his mind, though he does look around the room out of habit. He carefully makes his way down the stairs. He’s not used to them and they’re going to be hard to learn, he just knows it. They creak and groan under his weight, and it makes him nervous but he’s not sure if rushing down or going even slower will help more. 

When he’s finally made it down the stairs and to the kitchen, he chugs down a whole bottle of water from the fridge. Mommy doesn’t trust the tap here just yet. Eddie is very much awake. He softly shuts the refrigerator door, and wanders over to the back door to look out the window there. This backyard is bigger than the one they had in New York. There’s so much land, they even have a tree of their own. The neighbor’s golden retriever is out in their yard, separated by a low chain link fence and Eddie watches him sniff around until his owner opens the door to let him back in. 

He’s not scared. He’s not paranoid. He’s actually quite calm, and then he starts to head back to the stairs when once again, there is something there. 

This time it’s in the foyer, just at the end of the hall. Blocking his passage to the stairs. And it’s not all black. It’s very like a person, a man, who isn’t looking at him. 

Eddie takes the opportunity to tip-toe his way to the wall, hoping the guy doesn’t come into the kitchen and see him in the corner. Unfortunately, the closest wall was not the one with the phone on it. It’s all the way back towards the fridge. Eddie would have to cross the doorway, passing the potential burglar to get to it. Was he even a burglar? He wasn’t doing anything, just standing there looking down at something. _Oh god, oh god, it’s a crazy person who is going to murder us!_ Eddie’s brain starts to run wild with theories, but just as in his youth, all he can make himself do is stand there. 

There are no trudging steps, though, not his way or up the stairs or anywhere else. Nothing happens, nothing at all in what he knows is twenty minutes of hiding because he can check the clock on the stovetop. Carefully, Eddie peeks around the wall.

He’s gone. 

It should be a good thing, right? Maybe _he’s_ the crazy one, after all. Maybe this is a weird dream, and he’s going to wake up any moment. Maybe he just imagined it. 

Eddie takes a step out of the kitchen. Nothing. He walks towards the stairs. Not a single thing out of place, no one in sight. 

He curses himself and his messed up head as he climbs the stairs, and almost has himself feeling silly as he enters his bedroom. 

In the green luminescence, he can see a dark shadowy head on the other side of his bed. Like it’s crouched behind it, waiting for him. 

Eddie can’t make himself scream. All he does is lose his footing, falling down on the floor. The shadow moves around, then turns to produce the freaking would-be burglar from downstairs. 

Panicking, Eddie tries to put together a description of this guy, in case he makes it out of this alive. His face is skinny, his hair is dark, his eyes are dark, and he’s wearing big glasses. He stands up to be skinny, but tall, so tall from where Eddie is on the floor. What should he call that if he’s still alive when the cops get here? Six-foot-something? 

“Hey,” The guys says, startling Eddie into action. “Hey!” He calls out again, when Eddie begins scrambling to his feet. 

It’s strange. Eddie finds himself feeling that unwarranted understanding, like he had with the shadow’s anger. The notion of sadness washes over him, and it makes him pause. He looks back up at the burglar, who speaks again, 

“Can you see me?”


	2. Chapter 2

Can Eddie see him? Can he _see_ him? What kind of question is that? 

At least it drags him back to reality. Maybe this guy is on shrooms or LSD and thinks he’s invisible and broke into some random house? That’s something impaired people do sometimes, right? He’s heard that joke before.

It doesn’t make him less scary, though, the idea that his brain is scrambled like Rachael Leigh Cook has smacked it with a frying pan. He’s still coming towards Eddie, even if his brain doesn’t register when he stops several feet away. 

Clawing his way backwards, half on his feet and with only one good arm, Eddie grabs for anything at all. He gets the corner of his desk and hauls himself up. Then throws whatever he can lay a hand on, which turns out to be a shiny new red binder with barely anything in it, at the guy. 

As if it goes in slow motion, the guy looks down, and Eddie looks down, and the binder flops right through the stranger and onto the floor.

“Okay,” The guy says, calm as you please, looking back up at Eddie and meeting his eyes, “first of all, rude.” 

“Fuc-Rude? Fuck you!” Eddie sputters, finding his voice and reaching for something else to throw. This time a vinyl pencil case, which yet again goes right through the dude, bouncing off the floor. 

The stranger kind of laughs, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, guy, guy,” He says, the open printed shirt he’s wearing flapping with the skittish movement. “I don’t mean to spook ya, but I’m pretty sure I’m already dead, sticks and stones won’t break my bones.” 

“What the fuck are you on?” Eddie screeches instead of listening, clamoring for the door. In his peripherals, the guy shrugs. 

When he swings open his bedroom door, his mother is standing there. Looking upset and annoyed, instead of concerned. She slaps the light switch on and demands to know what’s going on. Eddie spins around to show her, and for what must make the millionth time...it’s nothing. No one. The guy is gone. 

Confused and infuriated, Eddie forgets his fear and stomps around the room, ripping the closet door open and whipping his bedding up to look under the frame. Mommy is talking, shouting at him about waking her or something, and Eddie’s just standing in the middle of his empty room. 

“But,” he mumbles, “he talked,” he tries to reason, more with himself than anything. Not answering his mother when she asks who talked. “He had a face,” 

Exasperated, as if she suddenly doesn’t trust him again, forgot everything they just went through, mommy huffs and tells him he had a nightmare. She bullies him back into bed, smacks the lights off, and slams his door.

What had he said? _He’s pretty sure he’s already dead?_ What the hell is that supposed to mean? He sure didn’t look dead. What’s wrong with his mother? Did they not just move states away from their home because Eddie was actually telling the truth? 

The rest of the night is uneventful, and Eddie stays up the whole time to be sure of that. In the morning, he looks around his room again. The binder and pencil case are still on the floor. He spends so much time checking every crack and corner that he has to shove them in his backpack and quickly tug on the clothes mommy had laid out for him or he’s going to be late for school. 

Derry Public High School is already shaping up to be a source of anxiety. He lives too close to take the bus, so mommy drives him there. It’s embarrassing and doesn’t exactly lend him any credit with his peers. When he gets dropped off, she takes his face in both of her hands, within sight of the main entrance, and kisses his forehead before he can go. Leaving him to wipe spit and crusty lipstick off of his skin as soon as he gets in the door. 

Eddie has never been the new kid before, either. He lived in the same place his whole life until now, he knew the kids in school and they had each other as sort of a safety net, even if they didn’t quite get along, when they moved to middle and high school. There was always a safe face that he recognized not far behind. Here, though, he struggled to find his place in a sea of strangers. 

It’s been just over a week since he found his locker to be right next to someone who is pretty social, or so it seems. A small group of five is congregated around it every morning, talking animatedly. Smiles all around. There’s a pretty girl, a big guy in a letterman jacket, a boy with curly hair and button-up shirts, and another who keeps saying he’s got to be at a farm later when they press him to hang out after school. When the bell rings, the kid who shuts it is a good-looking boy, if kind of pale, a little taller than Eddie with straight brown hair. He smiles, friendly, at Eddie when he catches him looking. The pretty girl will sling her arm around him. He’ll turn to her and kiss her cheek while they head down the hall, presumably to their classes. Letterman jacket looks a little sad, button-up shirts’ jaw cricks, and farm guy rolls his eyes mockingly. The handsome boy’s flock follows after him, splintering down corridors until they leave Eddie’s eyeline. 

Today, Eddie realizes he’s just staring after them and zoning out when the second bell rings. He hurries to cram his backpack into his locker, too busy blaming himself and wondering what the hell he was even staring for to hear approaching footsteps. 

Eddie has just pulled his hand out when the locker door slams shut. He barks out a surprised yelp and three boys laugh. 

The outside two shove the middle one, a big lug of a guy with dumb Meg Ryan-esque hair, playfully, congratulatory. It’s very Beavis and Butt-Head. 

Eddie tries to turn and go to his class, but as if he was plucked straight from an after-school special, Meg Ryan steps in his way. Is this town perhaps just full of junkies? Is he about to get mugged in the high school hallway? 

“Didya have to take the body down yourself?” Meg Ryan asks with a nasty smile on his face, “I heard the police didn’t wanna touch it, they didn’t wanna get AIDs.” 

Eddie is not a stop-and-think-about-it kind of guy. If one asked, he’d lie and say he is, because he thinks it would be a good quality to have, but it’s simply not the case. When something lights up his flight response he’s gonna run away from that situation like a bat out of hell. So it doesn’t matter what they’re saying - something about who used to live in his new house? - all that matters is that they’re closing in on him. 

He bursts through them, ducking under arms that elbow the nearest friend’s body, his broken arm painfully scraping the wall. They yell after him for a moment, but most of what he hears as he runs away is laughter. 

Eddie runs all the way to his class. He has to knock on the door to be let in by the stern teacher - at least the new kid status gets him off with a warning. 

Letterman jacket is in this class, though he must go a different way to get here. Out of a sense of panic, Eddie glues himself to any inkling of familiarity and sits close to him. 

This turns out not to be such a bad decision, because at the end of class, Letterman nudges his arm while they collect their stuff to leave.

“You’re new, right?” He asks, and offers his hand. “I’m Ben,” 

Eddie shakes it tentatively, and tells Ben his own name. They walk out of the classroom together. 

“I moved here during the last year of middle school. Easy to get lost,” Ben says, good naturedly. “The hazing doesn’t help!” He adds, still smiling and casual but there’s a sharp melancholy to his tone. 

Ben looks over at him, like he’s checking up on him, knows that’s why he was late. Eddie nods. Ben nods back in camaraderie, and goes on. “Where are you headed next?” 

Ben helps him find his English class, walking him to a different floor and then sprinting back up the stairs with a thumbs up.

Eddie gravitates toward him again for lunch, finding him sitting with the farm boy, whose name is Mike. They explain that their other friends have B-lunch, and are more than happy to make room for Eddie. 

It feels frighteningly good, to sit and have a lame conversation about Jurassic Park movies with some friendly faces. Eddie asks if Ben is on the football team or something, and they laugh. No - Honor Society. Mike says that he lives and works on his grandparent’s farm, and Eddie can practically feel his sinuses flaring. They let him in on the fact that they’re not exactly the popular crowd, in an oddly apologetic tone. They’re happy with the friends they have, but are just as often on the bad side of the bullies for “whatever reason”. Eddie’s not stupid, however. This is, as far as he’s experienced until meeting them, quite the hick town. Between Mike’s skintone and Ben’s weight there was really no “whatever” about it. The facts remain unspoken and unpushed, though. There’s a whole lot more laughing, even moving into cackling territory, when Eddie lets slip the nickname Meg Ryan for the dick they call Garton. Beavis and Butt-Head are named Steve and Chris. 

He’s feeling wonderfully comfortable by the end of lunch period, the promise of meeting the pretty girl, button-up guy, and handsome boy helping him through the day. Mike helps him find his next class, and his last is easy to remember, very near the front door. By the trophy case and memo board. 

For the first time in a long time, Eddie feels genuinely excited, and jumps up out of his seat when school is out for the day. He’s looking forward to getting to his locker, and talking to Ben and Mike again. There’s a little bit of a traffic jam, though. The classroom is so close to the exit, it’s already flooded with students trying to leave, thanks to the long-winded teacher assigning homework. Eddie gets pressed along the wall, waiting it out. Ben sees him and waves from just down the hall. The handsome boy turns and waves, as well. 

Everything feels too normal. He’s far too content right now, despite the mass of student bodies and their germs bumbling by him like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Maybe that’s why his attention is inexplicably drawn up, over, towards the bulletin board. Because he’s not allowed to feel normal for too long. 

From this angle, it’s only a bunch of paper and tacks, slices of off-white and gray, some starting to yellow. The wind blowing in from the open doors reveal layers, events and announcements past. Something about one, though, draws him over, makes him move. Eddie doesn’t even realize he’s pushed his way there until he’s standing in front of it. It is as though his feet move for him and don’t tell him where he’s going. 

He doesn’t know what possessed him. He only got a glimpse of it. He has to move at least ten other pages, touched by countless dirty hands over time. They’re held by multiple pins that layered them over his goal like a quilt. Weaved over something he doesn’t even know he’s looking for until he finds it - a page firmly stapled to the board on all four corners. 

It’s old, but not as old as the dates on it. There’s no way that a picture with ink this dark was printed in 1989. There’s no reason for it, Eddie doesn’t know anything, but images pour into his mind like peers out of the school. Of many iterations of this picture, one that may very well have been printed out in 1989. Being torn down and drawn on, debated and taken down, debated and put back up. 

This particular copy has some graffiti, too. Just a crudely drawn dick at the corner of a dark haired, dark eyed boy’s mouth. The word FAG written on his forehead, above big glasses.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is short bc i'm busy being sad sorry

Richie knows he’s dead. He’s known a long time. 

It was confusing at first. Everything seemed to fall away, like he was floating as his physical body drifted off to it’s last sleep, the faint commotion of his mother trying to break down his door somewhere far away. But he didn't stay in that place. The next morning, he woke up just where he had been. Sat at his desk, painstakingly worded letter under his folded arms. He didn’t want mom to think this was her fault. She couldn’t have helped him. There was no fixing him. 

He had opened his eyes, and it had been a strange sensation - his back didn’t hurt. His bruises weren’t sore, his dislocated jaw didn’t ache. Maybe it was the painkillers? He wondered when they’d stop working. And, looking to his small clock, specifically placed on his desk so he couldn’t smack the snooze button, he wondered why no one had woken him up for school. 

It had been a long time since Richie stopped putting effort into things like the way he looked. So he got up and went for the door, intending to get out of here and run downstairs, shove his feet in his Keds and be off for another day of pretending to be okay. He paused, though, because the door was open. The dresser he’d pushed against it was scooted towards the wall. He’d definitely locked it though. Right? 

Maybe mom thought he was sick and just let him sleep in? Did dad push open the door? 

There were many questions. They only kept coming, when he crept downstairs. Walked through an empty house. Where was mom? A peek outside told him that her car was here. Where could she have gone? A walk? Since when did she go on walks? 

He sat down at the kitchen table. He wasn’t gonna go to school if no one was gonna make him. He’d just wait for mom to come back.

Richie sat at the table for a long time. 

When finally, _finally,_ he heard his dad’s car pull up, he practically jumped out of the chair. Maggie and Wentworth Tozier came in through the front door, his mother practically slung over his father’s shoulders. They looked tired, they looked upset. They didn’t so much as look up at him. Richie panicked. 

“I’m sorry,” He said smally. A pair of police officers came in after his parents. Thankfully not Bowers. 

Was he in trouble? What did he do? Those pills had _his_ name on them, they were his to take! What else could he have done? 

“I’m sorry,” Richie says again, pleading as he follows his parents up the stairs, somber cops coming up behind him, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” He says, apologizing without knowing what he’s done. 

Dad tries to have mom lay down. She refuses and insists on “coming with”. Dad looks...he looks like Richie’s never seen. The expression on his face is so incredibly _sad._ His eyes are red, his breath ragged. Mom’s a crier, but dad? What the fuck is going on? 

They slowly make their way down the hall, Richie calling after them. “Mom? Dad? I’m sorry!” 

They skirt through the gap into his room, followed by the cops. Richie stands there for a minute, distraught and dumbfounded. What did he do?! 

When mom starts crying, he remembers what he left in there, and bolts for the door. To rip the letter out of her hands, pick up the empty bottle, whatever he needed to do. However, it doesn’t go that way. 

Richie’s skinny form slips quickly through the gap, and one of the cops is right there. Hands on his hips, solid chunk of man. Richie expects to crash right into him. It would probably get him in even more trouble, but fuck, at least they’d look at him!

Richie doesn’t stop when his front meets the officer’s back. He feels nothing, comes to no abrupt halt. He tumbles right through the guy. 

Looking back at him, he watches as the man shivers, and has no further reaction. Richie waves a hand in the cop’s face, two inches from the tip of his nose. Nothing. 

Mom lets out an awful wail, standing at his desk. The other officer and dad are having to physically support her, but dad isn't doing much better. 

It’s never left him. The sound his mother made, the look on his father’s face. The fact they couldn’t hear him say he was sorry. 

Things didn’t ever go back to normal for them, the way Living Richie hoped they would. He knew he was a burden, a bad son. He was so sure that he was a problem, one that he could make go away.

So many times, mom would sit at his desk and sob. Dad preferred to sit on his bed. They’d fight, like they never had before. About which of them did, didn’t, do what. Dad would wrap her up in his arms and Richie would wish he could, too. 

A brick got thrown through their living room window. Their mailbox got knocked off the post. At Halloween pink silly string was sprayed all over, the word AIDS artfully crafted in the stuff blasted over the width of the garage door. 

Living Richie was a stupid fuck, and Dead Richie knew he wasn’t much better. It was all his fault. When mom tearfully announced she needed out of this town, and dad agreed, he couldn’t even blame them. All he wanted to do was fix it. But he just made it worse. It would be better for them to go, leave him behind and be happy. 

Holy shit, though, did Richie miss them. 

He wonders how many years it’s been. No one has lived here since his parents left, and they didn’t exactly leave a calendar. He hadn’t the foresight to start one, either. The days and nights ran together in the dark, abandoned house. The odd vandal came up to it. Teenagers he started not to recognize would break in through the loose kitchen window and fuck on the floor every now and again. 

Richie never ventured far outside the house. The most adventuring he ever did was to the back yard or the front stoop. He was sitting there when the decrepit for sale sign was yanked out the garden, overgrown with weeds and spray painted with slander. It was replaced with a much brighter, proud SOLD! sign nearer the road. After it came the new people. 

A mammoth of a mom and noodle of a son settled themselves into the Tozier’s old home. Not a whisper of his name or what he was. Totally oblivious. 

Or so Richie thought, until the spaghetti boy saw him and practically shit his pants. 

Terribly uncomfortable with his mostly quiet shitty afterlife being interrupted, Richie was just trying to get used to the idea. He’d casually hang around big mama and listen to her phone calls, watch her freak out at her kid, even sat in on a riveting toenail-painting session. The boy seemed like the more entertaining choice. But he was living in Richie’s old room. Richie didn’t really go in there anymore. 

He’d only gone in there that (last?) night out of curiosity. See, he may be dead as fuck, but it’s real weird to walk through a closed door. His old door, which had been open to him, yet unused, for so many years was now almost always closed. Even when the guy went to school. 

The glow of the star stickers drew him in. Richie had forgotten about them, but remembered putting them up there. Remembered laying in bed at night and being glad to have something to stare at. It weirdly made him feel better. 

He’d just been wandering around the house as usual, sitting in the living room trying to muster the energy to turn on the TV. He’d done some physically impactful things before, though he could never seem to do them on purpose. Noodle came down the stairs and went into the kitchen, and Richie got up to watch. Sure, it was a strange form of entertainment, but it was the only one he had. 

He walked in behind the boy, about his age. Groggily stumbling around in his big loose T-shirt. It hung like a dress on him, it looked like he wasn’t even wearing boxers, though Richie could see they were under there when the spaghet bent over and fished a drink out of the fridge. Richie, eternal homo and utter failure, couldn’t stop himself from staring. The guy isn’t bad looking, a shortie with a cute worried face and dark doe-like eyes. Richie wondered about the cast. He’s surprised at the taught thighs stemming out of noodle’s shorts. 

Then it hit him what he was thinking. Sometimes those thoughts flooded in all of a sudden, drowning him. This is why you’re here. _This is why you’re dead._ Because you can’t stop yourself from staring at the boys. Because you’re disgusting. 

Just as the boy shut the fridge door and started to move away, Richie darted out of the room. Sick to a stomach he doesn’t even have anymore, hanging his head in shame. He’d have cried if he could. 

He went up the stairs for the express reason of not seeing the guy again tonight. But the glow of the stars, from the door which was closed to him, that made Living Richie feel a little less shitty staring up at them, called to him. Honestly, what the fuck was he expecting? For that to go well? 

In the thralls of another unearthly panic attack, Richie sits himself on the floor against the bed. It’s not quite where his had been. He angles his head back to take in the starry ceiling, but it’s no use. Not with bookshelves that weren’t his in sight, bedding that he’d never slept in at his back. A boy he’s never talked to living in his old room. 

Everything is so different. This room is different, this house, maybe the whole town for all he knows. Life moved on, and here he is. Forgotten and still the same, sick faggot. 

He ducks his head between his legs, a tip for when you’re nauseous that doesn’t serve a purpose now. But it’s just one of those things that stay with you, like “stop, drop, and roll”. Or the sound a mother makes reading her son’s suicide note. 

Suddenly, he hears a tumbling behind him, and Richie carefully draws himself up to see spaghetti boy on the ground, staring at him in utter terror. 

Richie checks behind him, and there’s nothing there. He realizes the guy’s eyes are following him, _looking at him._ It’s gut-wrenching, awful and good. 

“Hey,” Richie tests, softly. The boy somehow gets those deer eyes even wider, scrambling like he’s in a frying pan. “Hey!” Richie says again, startled himself at the reaction, that he got any reaction at all. “Can you see me?” He asks, almost excited in an I-may-vomit kind of way. 

Gaping like a fish, noodle stares at him, not taking his eyes off of him, and drags himself up on the corner of a desk. 

Richie makes strides toward the kid, concerned about that arm out of, he doesn’t fucking know, humanity or something? But stops, realizing that if this kid can see him, does he know Richie’s a ghost? 

He doesn’t even get to come to the paramount that spaghetti probably thinks Richie is a crackhead that broke into the house before a binder is wobbling it’s way straight through him. 

“Okay,” Richie says, and _god damn_ does it feel nice to speak words again. But his mouth always beats his brain to the introduction, and this is no exception. “First of all: rude.” 

That lights the kid up like a firecracker, it seems. The fear in his eyes makes way for straight up anger, and he sputters, continuing to feebly throw shit at Richie. 

“Hey, guy, guy,” Richie attempts, holding his hands up to show he’s not some armed intruder here to kill them for big mama’s Disney VHS collection. “I don’t mean to spook ya,” He tries, in a rusty accent that yeesh, he didn’t realize he’d been slacking so much on, “but I’m pretty sure I’m already dead.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time, working some extra hours and don't have a whole lot of free time for writing rn. Sorry!

The brief respite that is spending time with Ben and Mike’s friends is short lived. 

Bill, the handsome boy, had tapped on Eddie’s shoulder, stealing his attention away from the bulletin board. He’d smiled, introduced himself, stuttering just a little bit. Bill apologizes for it, and Eddie can’t stop himself from thinking that’s  _ cute.  _ No, no, he shouldn’t think “cute”. Boys aren’t “cute”. Bill is...modest. Yes, modest. That’s admirable. 

He draws Eddie over to their lockers, his posse rallied around them. As he sorts out what he’s leaving and what he’s taking home, Eddie meets the other two. Beverly, a vivid and riotous girl who welcomes him with a massive smile and comfortable humor, and who links her hand with Bill’s. It brings the strange expressions out of Ben and the other boy, who he learns is Stan, again. Stan is smartly dressed, says “hello” to him with an air of caution, then mostly sinks into the background. Not shyly - something about his demeanor makes it feel more like observation. It’s not crushing, though, simply a presence. 

The group have a beguiling discussion about how they’re going to Bill’s house, except Mike who is no fun and has to work. An invitation along is extended to Eddie, and it all feels so warm and Eddie wants, he  _ wants  _ to. Desperately, he wants to be part of this. To surround himself with people who are so friendly and open to him. He’s only been among them a matter of minutes and he feels wholly  _ good.  _

But a car horn blares outside, making him physically startle. Without a doubt, Eddie knows that if it’s not his mother, herself, it’s her awful driving that’s provoked it. 

He hurries to say he can’t before she barges her way into the school and scares his potential friends off. “My mom is like, way protective.” He quickly explains right after, afraid of scaring them off himself, “She doesn’t let me go anywhere,”

Beverly - Bev - nods sagely, and while the others tell him it’s too bad, that Eddie will have to come with them another time, she curiously says, “My dad was like that, too.” 

He doesn’t get to ask her how exactly she managed the miracle of the word “was” before the horn goes off again, startling him out of the thought process. 

They exchange regrets and goodbyes and then Eddie turns himself out to the parking lot, where mommy is laying on the wheel now. He gets in the car, embarrassed by the looks the spectators are giving his mother. 

She lets up when he’s buckled in, and then demands in her fake-sweet voice, “What took so long, Eddie-bear?” As if she’s done nothing wrong.

It’s a sickly feeling, the instinct to not share his joy with her. Everything Eddie likes, enjoys, even so much as doesn’t mind, his mother ruins if she catches wind of it. Like cartoons that will rot his brain, Halloween candy that would rot his teeth. He can’t swim in creeks anymore without fear of leeches and candiru fish. 

But she’s even worse when she finds out he’s lied to her, so Eddie quietly tells her, “I was talking to some kids from my class,” 

They’re pulling out of the parking lot and onto the road, now, and she jerks the car in the annoying way she does, using it like an extension of her facial expressions. Sometimes it feels like she’d strike him if her sphere wasn’t so limited. So she drives like a 90-year-old dog in the middle of spilling a McDonald’s coffee on itself instead. 

The car thrashes Eddie forward and back, and mommy turns to him with a blinding smile. Like the sun; in that it looks friendly enough from far away, but burns if you get too close. In the small sedan, proximity is not a choice. 

“You made friends?” She asks, ignoring a goose-like chorus of other parents trying to get out of the school parking lot behind them. 

“No!” Eddie gasps, and she narrows her eyes at him, and the words come out of his mouth like the three stooges out of a door. “Bill’s locker is just next to mine, and  _ he  _ was talking to  _ his  _ friends, and I mean, I have a class with Ben and we ate lunch together but I’ve only known them a  _ day-”  _ He takes a breath, awkwardly reaching for his inhaler that he had for some stupid reason, secured under his broken arm. “They’re not my friends,” He insists, finally unzipping his fanny pack and grabbing a hold of it. 

Sonia dials the smile down and starts driving again while Eddie puffs away his mania. The car is quiet for what would be a blissful few minutes if the air wasn’t so thick with suspicion. 

“I’ll have to meet them if you ever plan on seeing them after school.” She warns, once they’ve hit a stop light on main street. Because she knows he’s lying, like a shark to blood with any glimmer of hope Eddie gets. 

The thing about Derry, Maine, is that while there’s no way it’s as populated as even the average cow paddock in New York, it seems like someone’s always watching. The sidewalks are dotted with shopping housewives and men on their smoke breaks, and every head that turns their way makes Eddie feel more trapped. 

It’s like a train wreck, he knows he should probably look away, for his own good. “I know,” he says, staring out the front windshield at a woman crossing the street in front of them with a stroller. 

Mommy shifts in her seat, and the whole car moves. “I’ll have to meet their parents before you go to any of their houses.”

The pedestrians finish crossing, and the light turns green. 

“I know,” Eddie practically whispers, and the woman with a stroller is quickly out of his sight line. 

When they’re finally home, Eddie has nearly forgotten the stranger from ‘89. Can’t even recall the name that had been printed in big, bold letters. Just underneath ‘ _ In Memory Of’.  _ He’s had an exhausting, emotional roller coaster of a day, and he still has to do his homework. He doesn’t even look around, conducts no investigation before entering his room and throwing his backpack on the bed, and then himself after it. 

Two hours later, he wakes from his unplanned nap in a panic to Sonia calling him down for dinner. Eddie hurriedly wipes the drool from the corner of his mouth and sleep from his eyes, whipping himself down the stairs. 

Mommy comments on the pillow crease on his cheek, and he spends his dry meatloaf, canned corn, and boxed mashed potato dinner listening to her criticize him about compromising his sleep schedule. He needs to do his homework while the lessons are still fresh in his mind, this is why she doesn’t want him getting distracted.

Eddie’s just lucky her reruns come on at this time, and he gets to do the dishes in peace. 

Staring blankly out the window, sleeves feeling grossly damp at the pushed-up edges, he watches the neighbor’s kid play with the golden retriever. For an odd moment, it feels like deja-vu, and he slyly looks over his shoulder. Nothing is there. 

Not down the hall, not up the stairs, not in his room, he discovers, after putting the dishes on the drying rack and rejecting to join in on an episode of Forensic Files. He sits at his desk to start his homework, feeling no less tired. Maybe a little jittery, as he’s having a lot of trouble focusing. 

It’s just been a weird day, that’s all. He keeps looking around for something that isn’t there, and then the little details start nagging at him. 

_ What was that last name?  _ He wonders, trying and failing to power through a math worksheet. It had been something with a T-. Wasn’t there a T on the old mailbox? Meg Ryan said something about the kid who used to live here. The real estate agent claimed the house had been empty since 1991. How does a house this normal go unsold in a town this small for eight years? It’s not like it was run down. Pretty dusty, the yard was kind of an overgrown mess, but it was fine. The tiles in the bathroom weren’t even 1970’s ugly. 

Eddie tries to shake the thoughts from his head, and struggles his way to the bottom of the work pile. 

It’s fairly late when he finally puts the half-assed - some credit is better than no credit - assignments back into their respective folders and heads for the not-ugly bathroom. 

Traumatizing move aside, it’s kind of nice to have a shower separate from mommy’s. 

Like a small child, Eddie checks behind the curtain and under the sink before locking himself inside. He carefully wraps his cast in a plastic shopping bag, so looking forward to two weeks after next when he can get it taken off. It’s embarrassingly blank, a symbolic reminder of his isolation that he doesn’t like to think about that hard. He wasn’t even allowed to get it in a color. He’d been deciding between red and yellow when mommy interjected that white looks much neater. 

Eddie sighs, stepping into the hot but kind of weak shower stream. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about her, right now. Maybe the water pressure is what put people off of this house. 

He dips his face into the water, letting his mind drift to tomorrow. If Ben and Mike and their friends will be by his locker. At the very least, Bill will be there. With his warm smile and cute - no, no. Endearing? Is that term less...illicit? His  _ endearing  _ stutter and bright eyes. 

Teenage hormones have Eddie all kinds of messed up, so he thinks he can be forgiven for ignoring the warm pit curling inside him. It happens to boys his age, right? At the worst times, like in class or at sleepovers. But Eddie is alone right now, so it’s okay for him to have a random hard on for something stupid. 

Something as stupid and inconsequential as Bill’s shoulders, not particularly broad, spectacularly average. And his forearms, the one he hung around Bev this morning. God, even the brush of Bill’s fingertips on Eddie’s shoulder is a sensation that replays, and his hand skates down, down over his belly. Lightly skimming his tumidity, then gripping it tentatively. 

He doesn’t really do this, not often. Because he  _ used  _ to share a bathroom, and that made him feel weird, but his bedroom was too quiet. He doesn’t share anymore, though, the water is weak but it’s enough to cover his little panting breaths. 

It’s such a rare occasion, and such a strange day, that Eddie pushes the guilty, gross feelings down and lets himself think of a boy. Bill’s a boy with a girlfriend, after all. Eddie wonders how long they’ve been together, if they’ve...done anything. He could very well be picturing both of them, thank you very much. 

He’s not, though, it’s just Bill and his slender build and pale throat, despite being tainted with the feeling of being a mega-creep thinking about someone he barely knows, that takes Eddie over the edge and has him supporting himself against the tile wall. It’s a little chilly, compared to the water, almost refreshing, and he rests his forehead on it, too. 

The guilt creeps back up on him, and is not helped by the harsh knock and the reminder of how long he's been in here at the door. 

“I’m just finishing up!” Eddie calls back, quickly scrubbing his hands and the wall of evidence.


End file.
